The Car Sharing experience in Rome: when less is more

Car Sharing (CS) in Rome started to be operative in March 2005, as a trial within an EC-funded project; despite its initial, modest implementation, the measure soon proved to be popular and therefore worth to be progressively enlarged across the city. Nowadays, CS is available in the most central neighbourhoods of the city, but more vehicles are expected to be operative in other areas very soon. A co-operation between the local CS operator (Agenzia Roma Servizi della Mobilità) and the “Sapienza” Department of Civil Engineering was started to develop such an expansion plan, according to an in-depth analysis of the operations run so far. For this purpose, a series of performance indicators has been defined and elaborated in order to assess the efficiency of CS not only under the operational point of view, but also in terms of achievable environmental benefits. Hence, the general approach has been two-pronged: on the one hand, operational indicators have been meant to provide values which may constitute a kind of threshold for the feasibility of the planned expansion to other areas; on the other, calculations of emissions of the CS fleet have been aimed at proving how a niche measure, as sharing cars, may positively contribute to improve air quality levels. If the former goal is clearly aimed at providing the local CS operator with sound reasons to upscale operations and place new resources at a given place rather than another in sight of major incomes, the latter is, on the contrary, focused on increasing the awareness, among the traditional drivers, of the need to switch towards more sustainable mobility patterns, in a city as Rome, where one of the highest motorization rates in Europe is recorded: 978 vehicles, including two-wheelers, every 1,000 in-habitants. To have car-dependent citizens renouncing to their own vehicles in favor of paratransit seems, therefore, to be a very challenging task whose positive outcomes can go far beyond the simple promotion of an alternative mode of transportation, being less pollution and increased livability more important premium values for the built environment.